"As a black person, I realized long ago white people enjoy black people waiting on them. In a lot of ways, it makes them feel good. It makes them feel like things haven't changed that much in this damn country.

If there's one job they think black people SHOULD have...waiting tables would probably be high on the list. Along with jivin' and dancin'."

--Barry, a waiter in the East Village

Ugh...I don't know what's going on, but I'm having problems with this software. I'm getting posts replicated, and posts deleted. I somehow lost Tuesday's post. Oh well, I'll try and see if I can reconstruct it somehow.

Anyways, here's Roger talking a bit about the owner of his restaurant. Owners can be very complicated. They have difficult jobs trying to keep numerous balls up in the air: keeping staff, paying rent, food costs and liquor costs, and keeping customers coming in the door.

And as most waiters tell me, this balancing act is made all the more difficult by the fact that owners are completely psychotic crazies.

******************

But a lot of the drama revolves around our owner. A lot of owners of bars, I think, are...a little crazy. I think you have to be a little crazy to open a place in New York City. But he is. He's not always there which is...which is a little more relaxed. Like tonight he was gone and once he leaves you can pretty much, like, you can pretty much let the place run into the ground.

You can't close early, or anything. But you can sit and have a meal maybe, or you can like, maybe if we're really dead, you can make a few cuts and let some people go home, or whatever. Ya know? Which is good.

But when he's there, it's just like...you never know what kind of mood he's going to be in. Sometimes he'll be really, really happy. And he'll be like "Hey, I'm ordering takeout for everybody!" Ya' know?

And he takes money out of the drawer and orders takeout from this place around the corner for everybody. It's really weird. And that's more unusual. Most of the time, he comes in and he's,uh, ya' know, "From now on, I don't want anybody standing in this spot."

Okay. Whatever you say. You just kind of agree and just kinda' go along with it. And when he's there, it's kind of stressful, 'cause he's always looking for something that's wrong. Ya' know.

He was born in Europe. I don't know a whole lot about him. He came over to New York. I think he had a couple of restaurants at the time, and now he just has this one. He used to have a lot more people working with him.

He used to have a partner dealing with finances. He had someone who was ordering all the liquor, that kind of stuff. Now it's basically, him and one other manager doing everything. And I think a lot of that stuff, he doesn't really know how to do it. And a lot of times, we servers talk about how our restaurant would be alot busier if someone would advertise. Ya' know?

8:39:41 AM     comment []